Education, Schools & HIV/AIDS
Consortium Member Initiatives

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ActionAid
Since 1999, ActionAid has been actively involved in linking education and HIV through:
* mainstreaming HIV/AIDS work into education by engaging people working on education to prioritise HIV/AIDS (within ActionAid and the wider international education community)
* ensuring that HIV/AIDS responses draw on wider learning about what is effective in the field of education
* developing community programmes, such as Reflect Plus, that incorporate responses to HIV/AIDS into adult learning projects at community level
* encouraging South-South learning and playing a pivotal role in the creation and implementation of Strategies for Hope (a series of publications about living positively)
* collecting life stories on how people's work in education has been affected by HIV/AIDS, to give a human dimension that people can relate to

Specific projects:
1) Education Positive is a new project which encourages people around the world who work in education to prioritise HIV/AIDS as an issue that they must directly address and cannot leave to others.
- within ActionAid
- within the wider NGO constituency / civil society
- within governments
- within donors

The aim is to build this engagement of education people both in the process of the work and through the product. Case studies and testimonies will be compiled into a publication which draws upon ActionAid's experiences in mainstreaming HIV into its education work. This publication will be an important tool for other organisations wishing to mainstream their education work.

Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS means adapting your work to take into account possible transmission and impact of HIV/AIDS, and maximising the role education can play in preventing the spread of the epidemic. Mainstreaming can occur at two levels in an organisation:
1) institutional prioritisation
2) individual prioritisation

Obviously, the two are linked. Education Positive will encourage individuals within ActionAid and other NGOs, to prioritise and reflect upon HIV/AIDS which will in turn, increase the level of priority which organisations as a whole, place on HIV/AIDS.

But what does this mean in practice? It means individuals working in education reflecting upon what drives HIV in schools, what the potential impact will be, and how to mitigate that impact. Moreover, it means taking responsibility for the role education has in preventing HIV transmission within and outside the formal education sector.

The process of mainstreaming HIV into all aspects of ActionAid's education work will involve the following steps:
1) Share learning between HIV and education teams - through creation and strengthening of networks
2) Identify and document innovative HIV and education projects (both impact mitigation and preventive education)
3) Collect personal testimonies of people working in education to further our understanding of HIV/AIDS in education - in order to "humanise" HIV and use as educational tool

2) Programmatic work:
A major new initiative is underway to link Reflect and Stepping Stones - an HIV/AIDS training package focusing on relationships and communication skills. Workshops in India, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda have brought together Reflect and Stepping Stones practitioners and in June 2003 draft guidelines were produced for practitioners planning to fuse the two approaches.

For Stepping Stones practitioners these new guidelines offer a way of extending the normal Stepping Stones process, enabling facilitators to use a range of participatory tools to explore with participants the wider impact of HIV/AIDS on all areas of community life. They also provide guidance on how to build additional communication skills, including literacy and numeracy, to enable participants to take part in action and decision-making beyond the interpersonal and household sphere. This extended, more flexible process is provisionally called the STAR approach (Stepping Stones and Reflect).

For Reflect practitioners the guidelines are designed to show how all discussions and analysis can be related to the impact of HIV/AIDS on individuals, families and communities. They aim to give facilitators the confidence, skills and participatory tools they need to deal effectively with sensitive issues such as sex and death. This process is provisionally called Reflect+ (Reflect Plus, or Reflect Positive).

Whilst these two processes effectively converge, their organisational starting points are different. Over the coming three years the Africa Reflect Network Pamoja and ActionAid's Africa Regional Office will offer systematic support to existing and new practitioners seeking to pursue this new direction across Africa. Linked initiatives are planned in Asia and Latin America.

For further details contact Tania Boler (tboler@actionaid.org.uk)

Interact Worldwide
Interact Worldwide's (formerly Population Concern) Education Department works in schools and colleges across the UK to raise awareness of international sexual and
reproductive health and rights, including HIV/AIDS. Our primary target
group are students aged between 15 and 19 to whom we deliver talks and
workshops on topics including HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality, population,
gender equity and human rights. Our sessions are delivered to whole year
groups or are tailored to support the curriculum across a number of
subjects including geography, PSE, citizenship and general studies. We
also organise annual youth conferences to bring young people together to
debate sexual and reproductive health topics in the context of human
rights. In previous years these conferences have taken place in London,
Edinburgh and Cardiff.

Interact Worldwide's Education Department also produces teaching
resources to support teachers to work with our issue in the classroom.
Our resources include wall charts, CD ROM's and lesson plans. In the
Academic year 2003/4 we will be launching the 'Parallel Lives' video
which focuses on attitudes to sexual and reproductive health amongst
young people in Soweto and Edinburgh, including the key themes of risky
behaviour, HIV/AIDS and STI's, young parenthood and relationships. This
will be accompanied by a teachers pack drawing out the main themes of
the video. For further information about Interact Worldwide's Educational Work please contact Sarah Mackie on 0131 662 4267
http://www.interactworldwide.org